Friday, 20 February 2009

Atlantis - Google Earth shows the location of the Lost City?

Lots of excitement today as the Sun newspaper is reporting on its front page that Google Earth (or more precisely Google Ocean from the latest iteration of Google Earth) is showing the location of the Lost City of Atlantis.

I used the news reports to find the location of the Atlantis discovery and had a look myself:

Google Earth supposed location of the Lost City of Atlantis (click for larger image)

The co-ordinates of the Atlantis discovery are LAT 31 degrees 25'24.45"N, LONG 24 degrees 25'37.01"W. You can either use these to go straight there or alternatively hunt around near the Canary Islands.

So is this the Lost City of Atlantis?

Close up of the Lost City Of Atlantis taken from Google Earth (click for larger image)

Whether this turns out to be a find of real significance or just a strange piece of imagery remain to be seen - though marine scientists are already pouring cold water on the claims with Ogle Earth stating that "it's merely a grid of higher resolution sounding data amid a lower-resolution dataset, taken from a ship surveying the area" and the Daily Mail reporting that 'lost city of Atlantis image proves to be nothing of the sort.'

What it does show though is how mainstream online tools and technology have become. Even with the subject matter involved, it is still remarkable that the Sun have chosen to feature Google Earth as their front page main story!

UPDATE - now featured on the Official Google blog here and on the Official Google Earth Lat Long blog here - with Google using these posts to confirm that it is not Atlantis.

10 comments:

Anonymous
said...

This is not atlantis. These structures are simply high-resolution sonar readings from a ship that was moving methodically over this region of the ocean. These readings are overlaid on the low-resolution background, creating the illusion of structure.

"Anonymous" is quite correct about "These structures (lines) are simply high-resolution sonar readings from a ship that was moving methodically over this region of the ocean."

The "lines" seen in Google Maps on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean about 31°15'15.53" N, 24°15'30.53" W. that are being touted as "Atlantis" are grid patterns along which data was collected during the Tydeman 80 and Tyro 82 cruises. These grid patterns correspond exactly to the so-called "Atlantis" in Google Earth are shown in figure 1 of:

Link to this PDF file found in "e-Print Soton, University of Southhampton, Year: 1987" at:

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/15118/

PDF file at:

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/15118/01/250.PDF

In addition, this so-called "Atlantis, was part of the study area for Ocean Drilling Project (ODP) Leg 157. The cores taken from ODP drill sites 950, 951, and 952, within this alleged "Atlantis" completely refute any arguments that this area was at any time above sea level. Go see:

The Azores are only a portion of Atlantis. The island chain actually make up the north-eastern side of the lost civilization. To my best estimate, the center of the island of Atlantis is latitude 36°28'57.42"N and longitude 29°47'15.50"W. With the city itself located at 36°15'56.89"N 26°54'45.53"W. I estimate the island is 600 miles from north to south and 500 mles from east to west.

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